Progress Check

Good news from the doc.

I took a blood test recently.  The best, most ideal indicator of how "under control" diabetes is is the A1C test.  It's in essence how much of your red blood cells have sugar attached.  When sugar is attached to your blood cells, it's harder for them to squeeze into smaller capillaries like in your feet.  One reason why diabetics with out of control disease lose their feet:  blood isn't getting in there.

The A1C is a better indicator than the day-to-day glucose test I take, because that's a reading based on hour-by-hour eating and fasting.  The A1C is like a 3-month snapshot average, thus providing a really good glimpse of just how under control the disease is.  I can fake a day's worth of little finger-prick tests if I do shit like eat a boatload of sugar then take a couple shots of vodka, or eat a loaf of bread then do an hours-worth of wind-sprints.  You can cheat the gluco-meter.  You can't cheat the A1C.

A "normal" non-diabetic person would have an A1C result of somewhere between 4.5% and 6%.

My blood test:  4.8%.

Bam.

The doctor has put me on metformin, an oral drug with huge benefits.  He has also taken me off of insulin.  Further, my metformin dose is half the regular dose.  The goal is to even some day work me off of metformin.

Metformin isn't fake insulin.  In fact, it works specifically with my body's own insulin, which I'm producing some of.  From a med journal:

Many people may wonder, "How does it work?" Metformin belongs to a class of drugs known as biguanide medications and works in several ways. The medicine reduces the amount of sugar made by the liver, limits the amount of sugar absorbed into the body from the diet, and makes insulin receptors more sensitive (helping the body respond better to its own insulin). All of these effects cause a decrease in blood sugar levels. Since metformin does not increase the amount of insulin produced by the body, it is less likely to cause dangerously low blood sugar (hypoglycemia), as many other diabetes medications can do.

It also reduces my long-term risk of heart disease, a common co-occurring disorder with diabetics, and vastly reduces pancreatic cancer risk.

This is huge.  No more shots.  My body is working again.  Other diabetic risks diminish both because of my diet and exercise and because of this med.  I tend not to get hypoglycemic during my completely insane workouts now.  

I'm really pleased, and really proud.